


Eagle Flight

by applecameron



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Forced Marriage, M/M, Mpreg, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:06:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 14,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecameron/pseuds/applecameron
Summary: Arthur is an undisclosed omega, prince and castellan of the keep Eagle Flight, fallen after siege, forced into marriage with his conquerer, Eames, to preserve his people.





	1. Ending

**Author's Note:**

> My take on alpha/omega is that omegas are hermaphrodites, who present as male or female at birth and whose second sex presents itself at puberty or later, generally in response to an alpha's pheromones, although, being a medieval-ish AU, the mechanism is not understood.

Arthur met his fate on the steps leading down to the courtyard, shortly after dawn on the day the siege lifted. He and his people were tired, hungry, and wrapped in blankets as there was not a stick of firewood left within their stone walls. When he saw the men leading the victor's horses to him, he stood up even straighter. A prince must not slouch, must not show his defeat no matter how sick with it he felt. Several of his men followed suit. 

The castle's conqueror was a sturdy-looking man of middle height, with light eyes and hair, who sat easily on his horse. His cloak was trimmed in fur and his hands were bare. He knew Arthur when he saw him, and dismounted. The air was cold enough their breath puffed out in little clouds, possibly the only warm thing left to anyone that morning. 

A clerk-ish type with a high voice introduced them, vanquished to the victor, given his higher social rank. "Highness, may I present the second son of the Duke of Lowen, Lord Roger Eames." The clerk turned to address his own master. "My Lord, may I present the son of Princess Mary, daughter of the Crown Prince Erik, and the Castellan of Eagle Flight, Arthur." 

Everyone bowed. Arthur surrendered his sword, and the castle, embodiment of all those years of study, of effort, of stewardship, was no longer his. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry. He wanted to run himself through on his enemy's sword. But he couldn't do any of those things. A noble must be noble, even in defeat. Must treat for the best care of his people. Must stay hostage to their welfare, if that is Fate's will. 

If the Duke's son were a little older and had had a daughter, Arthur might've been married off to her in short order, to legitimize Eames' claim to the castle and lands. Instead, he suspected the man might pack him off to some cousin. It couldn't happen fast enough. The alternative he didn't want to think upon. 

Eames gestured at his men and several began unloading firewood from wheeled barrows farther down his military train, along with some other kinds of supplies. Eames knew full well the decimation they'd suffered since he'd inflicted it, thus, bringing his own meat, oil, wood, to feed him and the conquered. 

Eames made another gesture - his face, upon close inspection, didn't seem that much older than Arthur's - and asked, "won't you show me the defenses, Your Highness, while our people set things to rights?" It was a request Arthur understood - getting fires restarted and the kitchens running again would go more smoothly without nobles hanging over everyone's shoulders while they try to get work done. The same principle applied in soldiering. So they needed an aristocratic task to occupy themselves for a while. Fortunately, Eames had a vanquished keep to tour. 

So, Arthur, his own man, Eames (Arthur was previously informed he preferred that name to Lord Roger), his clerk and one other, went into the walls and up, showing the new ruler his gate, the thickness of his walls, the guard stations. They took their time, Eames revealing himself clearly as the military mind behind his recent campaign's success. But generous in his victory. Any of Arthur's men could be paid out or take oath to serve the keep's new master. Maimed soldiers would receive fair pensions. He could afford largesse, with the wealth of resource-rich Lowen behind him, even as a second son. They could've fared worse, far worse, at another conqueror's hands. 

Hungry mercenaries would've sacked the keep, raped the women, any omega they found, and boys, and either left them to starve, sold them, or drove them out into the burgeoning autumn cold. 

They lingered for a while atop the wall, looking out at the remainder of Eames' men encamped around the castle. In the bright cold day, Eames inhaled deeply and considered the view. "Leave me with the prince." 

Arthur's secretary looked startled, but at a nod, withdrew, drawing the others with him until it was just the two of them, victor and vanquished, looking at each other under the chill sun. Eames' gaze was steady. Arthur suppressed the urge to pull his cloak about himself a little more tightly. "My Lord." 

"Your Highness. There was a rumor you had presented as an omega, and now that I am here, I find it to be true." He inhaled again, more overtly this time. "Do not deny it. Your scent says everything." 

Arthur closed his eyes and put a hand on the edge of the wall, thinking for one foolish moment he might throw himself off. 

Eames stepped close and touched his arm, shaking his head. "You know what would happen, if you take that step, Prince." Up close, Arthur wasn't sure whether the man's eyes were blue or gray. "I would light your pyre and give you all honors, but your people would find themselves under siege again and again, from worse men than me, all with no clear claim to rule. If-" 

Arthur shrugged off his hand and spoke to the stone wall. "I know my duty." 

"And I know mine." Eames looked him up and down, not unkindly. "Prepare yourself. My physician will come to your rooms to confirm your presentation. We will hold the wedding in two days. No one can contest my claim then." He swept past and called for his men, shoulder brushing Arthur's, leaving just a trace of his own scent in the air to tickle Arthur's nose. 

And that was the alternative Arthur hadn't wanted to think upon. Because Lord Roger Eames, son of the Duke of Lowen, siege-breaker, soldier, alpha, would marry him to solidify his claim to Eagle Flight if he found out Arthur's secret, a windfall if ever there was one, and then were would Arthur be? 

He supposed he would now find out. 


	2. Confirmation

The physician's hands were warm, at least. This was the second time in his life Arthur had endured this examination. The first was when it became apparent he might be…well. Might be one of those able to impregnate a woman, or bear another man's child. There weren't any others in Eagle Flight, or known alphas for that matter, so Arthur had little practical experience in what it meant. But, he knew enough to know his nature made him a fertile chip in a political marriage game long populated by too many sons. No wonder Eames was eager to wed and bed him quickly, someone else might try to take him once news got out. A childbearing grandson of the Crown Prince made a potent mate to the second son of the richest Duchy in the land. 

Arthur lay on his back, in his nightclothes, under a sheet pulled up to his chin. The other end was held up at the corners by the physician's assistants, who looked steadfastly elsewhere. "Lift up your shirt, highness." His knees were bent and feet flat on the bed. 

Arthur obeyed, submitted to scrutiny, to being poked - literally! - by the physician's finger, pressing at the seam that began just under his testicles, then rubbing his fingers together. The mild degree of penetration felt more like pressure than anything else, the seam yielding slightly to a hint of something more wet and spongey within. "Ah. Has your Highness not experienced a full heat?" 

"I haven't." Arthur's own hand was reclaimed by Lady Ariadne, his sole female attendant. Today she stood by the head of the bed, serving as witness to the examination and its results. "I was a late bloomer, generally," he said to the physician's look of disbelief. "My mother's physician said it was not uncommon." 

His mother's physician, a cadaver of a man, had served up strange-tasting tonic after tonic for Arthur to drink, "for his health," for most of his young life, and attended him constantly. Arthur had detested his touch but a former Court physician, set on him by his mother's will, could not be opposed. Arthur endured the man's fascination with his body, the trailing caresses, the night-time visits, until after his mother's death. Once Arthur felt he could get rid of him, he did, and he felt ill and out-of-sorts for so long after that Arthur very nearly summoned him back. Eventually his strange malaise passed, and over the following year Arthur finally sprouted, attaining his full height (unremarkable, but satisfactory), and his hidden sex signaled its existence. That exam, at the hands of a local midwife, was easy. She'd had warm hands too, and patted Arthur on the thigh when he'd gotten dressed. "Cheer up, Master. It's twice as many great marriages you can make now." She'd left him with a long litany of instructions (eminently practical things like do not tie your testicles and rod out of the way of your omega sex in an attempt to appear more feminine to your lover, over time it will injure your Highness's ability to pass water), and told him to send his woman to her for more information. Ariadne had made herself the woman's student ever since. 

"So perhaps this development has come even later? Hmmmm." The physician, his dark curls escaping his cap, was named Yusuf. He straightened and nodded for his assistants to release the sheet. Arthur wormed back up the bed, tugging his nightshirt down, leaning against his pillows. His bed had no headboard, just the dosser, a thick tapestry with an aging hunting scene depicted across it. "How was Your Highness's appetite as a child?" 

"Sickly." Lady Ariadne supplied. She was a year or two older than Arthur, and in his mother's train back then. After her death, most of her other ladies preferred to retire, but Ari asked to remain as part of his household. He had thought at one point they might even marry, but the affection between them had never been anything other than sibling-like, which ended the matter, since, politically, it was not an advantageous match for him. He might be the son of a mere Castellan, but his mother was a princess. 

Arthur nodded. It was true. His appetite had been sickly, with all those tonics he'd swallowed it was hard to be hungry. Then, later, they'd spent too much time either on the move, Arthur escorting caravans over the high mountain pass with his men, or, more recently, under siege and strict rationing. Getting enough to eat had never been his priority. It showed in his body: he was sinewy, never bulky. 

"Hm." Yusuf appeared to be talking as much to himself as them, as he rinsed his hands in a bowl of water. "Some women who do not eat enough food find their monthly courses stop. Our belief is that the body cannot feed a child, therefore it absorbs the courses to retain that nourishment for itself." 

The thought hadn't occurred to Arthur before, he blurted without thinking, horrified, "Will I have courses like a woman once I have my heat?" 

"No, Highness. That is a difference between masculine omegas, and women or feminine omegas. One sex is always primary. In your case, the male sex is ascendant, the organs visible at birth. We believe the presence of the male organs from birth drains the female courses and they are expelled differently, or as some Eastern physicians claim, reabsorbed." He kept drying his hands rather than look at Arthur. "I will inform my lord that you are indeed omega." 

"Yes. He'll want to make an announcement right away." Arthur said dully, lying back to look up. He might as well get used to the view. 

Yusuf cleared his throat after a moment of shuffling, and Arthur propped up on his elbows and looked at him. The two attendants were gone. "Highness. On your wedding night, your Highness and my lord must …consummate your union." Arthur nodded, confused at the obvious nature of the statement. "Fully. Lord Roger must penetrate that sex which is currently hidden." 

Lady Ariadne stiffened at his side. Arthur didn't squirm. Princes don't squirm in embarrassment, they listen to their advisors with equanimity at all times. 

"There are ointments I can give you to induce your omega sex to full exposure for consummation for one night. But they are dangerous if used repeatedly. My lord…" Yusuf coughed pointedly. "Is a man of high animal spirits and has been without female companionship for some time. Since his wife died. He finds you most comely. He is likely to seek his conjugal rights frequently." Meaning Arthur's nights would not be his own after the wedding night for some time to come. "It is better to induce your heat as soon as possible." Of course it was stupid of Arthur to hope any of his life might be his own after the wedding night. An omega, once married, would literally belong to his husband, as would his claim to the keep, which was the point. His status revealed, he was no longer peer to a man. 

Most omegas present far earlier in life and from that point on are treated more like women, especially in terms of property ownership, than anything else. That Arthur had claimed his father's position as castellan was technically improper, given his omega nature, even though neither he nor anyone else knew it at the time. 

All along, he had thought himself one thing, and now he had been reduced to a pawn. Philosophically, all nobles were pawns on their ruler's chessboard, but Arthur found philosophy to be a cold comfort to one lying in bed with his new lord's physician lecturing him on his husband-to-be's sexual appetite. 

"How does one do this?" He asked. It seemed like demanding his bones grow faster or something. Another part of his mind kept tripping over the offhand remark that Eames thought him comely. They'd spent a bare hour or two in one another's presence. How could one know anything in that short a time that might attract them? 

"You must allow him to come to you tonight, and every night, and take his seed into every…into your mouth and every other channel you are able to open to him. Onto your skin. As frequently as possible, so that his scent marks you." 

Arthur sat up fully, and pointed at his clothes for Ariadne to help him re-dress, regardless of the look on Yusuf's face. "The marriage will be cursed! I won't be virgin." 

"He must scent mark you, so that your sex awakens to him as your mate." He made a sign like a flower blooming. "That is the sex that must remain virgin until your wedding night. He must also - " Yusuf started to make a gesture toward his own neck, but was interrupted as a page came in, announcing, "His Lordship" with Eames hot on his heels. 

Ariadne moved to shield him from view as Arthur, still in his nightshirt, clutched his clothing to him and considered diving back under the bedclothes. 

"My lord," Arthur said stiffly. 

"Prince Arthur." He looked at the others. "You may all leave." 

The room cleared, with brief whispers from Yusuf into his lord's ear, and backward glances from both physician and Ariadne. Arthur felt ridiculously exposed. 

Once they had gone, "Yusuf told you?" 

Arthur nodded. "He said you must scent mark me to encourage my heat to begin, to make our union…" Arthur had no idea how to finish his sentence, so he opted for a vague hand gesture instead. 

Which Eames promptly repeated, with a faint smile. "Perfectly summarized, my Prince. I must use that gesture again when I'm faced with describing…." He repeated the gesture, and chuckled. 

Not at Arthur, though. The difference was in the warmth of his expression, which was, overall, not unkind. Whether it was kind remained to be seen. 

The attempt at humor faded as the pair considered the obligations of the marital bed, not even a foot away. Eames cleared his throat. "My father gave my mother a prostitute's disease, near the end of her life. I will not take my needs to a brothel." 

That was one of Arthur's ideas, shot down before it even took flight. "Oh." 

"Do you not find me…even a little appealing? I'm usually well-favored by the ladies." 

Arthur thought about it for a bit, biting back the knee-jerk response that he was not a lady. "In truth…I don't know much what I like. Ladies or…otherwise." Princes had to be careful in their amorous adventures with women. And of men, the less said the better, in his view. There had been a boy once, that he kissed. His mother put a stop to that, quickly. A prince couldn't have an unproductive marriage, after all, so a relationship with another man was pointless, in her view. If only she had known. 

Eames nodded at Arthur's expression of inexperience and they regarded each other silently for a while, as the fire popped. 

Arthur cleared his throat. "Thank you for the firewood." 

Eames looked at the fire. "This place must have been cold without one." 

"Yes." Arthur looked down at the clothing in his hands, then back up. It was his duty to make this work. He would shortly be married to this man. He searched for something positive that he could say and mean it. Something he could admire Eames for. Finally, "You treat your people well. That, I like." He smiled at his success. 

Eames nodded. The warmth and closeness of the room itself was helping, working some tiny magic of its own to spread Eames' scent on the air. Arthur could almost taste it on the back of his tongue. He wondered if Eames tasted his in the same spot. This room must be full of Arthur's scent, though he'd never thought of it. There were no other known omegas or alphas in Eagle Flight. 

"Do you…" 

"Yes?" They were drifting closer together without really trying, Arthur still with his clothes in his hands. 

"Do you also have heats?" He really felt so ill-informed on the subject of his own nature as an omega, and Eames seemed to carry himself with such confidence. And with his own physician. Surely, they knew more? 

"In response to an omega's heat scent, an alpha like me will experience a similar drive to." He used Arthur's hand gesture and they both smiled. "But I have no hidden.." 

Another step, and they were nearly touching, their heights well-matched save for the difference between boots and bare feet. "Organs?" Arthur supplied. 

"Organs," the other man agreed, bending to run his nose along the line of Arthur's neck, inhaling. 

Arthur found himself tilting his head to allow for better access without even thinking. Perhaps this could work. Then he shuddered, as his husband-to-be trailed fingers along the bare skin of Arthur's arm. It reminded him too much of his mother's physician. The vividness of the memory made him wince, not in pain exactly, but something like it. 

Eames dropped his hand away instantly. 

"I don't like that." He shook his head, rubbing at his arm to make the feeling pass. "Creeping touches. They-." He felt cold. 

"What about this." Eames interrupted. He placed his hands on Arthur's waist, unhesitatingly, and pulled them together. "Firm touches only." 

They came together like dance partners. Eames did not stroke, took no liberties. Just breathed in Arthur's scent. Arthur thought maybe he liked being like that, but he remained stiff after that reminder of the past. 

"Can you not…relax into the inevitable?" The join of Eames' neck to his shoulder exuded its own fascination to Arthur. He wanted to lick it. No sooner had the thought formed than he attempted the deed. Eames' skin was freshly washed, definitively male. His scent was strong there. 

Arthur moaned and Eames put his hand on the back of his neck, holding him there with a muttered "oh, yes". The pressure of his hand made a shudder, a good one, roll through him. He licked again, and Eames dipped his head and did similarly, then nipped a little at the skin. 

"You smell so good," one of them murmured. 

"Your physician said…" 

"I know what the physician said. Get into the bed. Without your gown." directed Eames softly. "He doesn't know everything." 

Arthur clambered back in, embarrassingly bare, in short order. Eames followed more slowly, hampered by the need to remove his boots first. He took off all his clothing, and Arthur could see the wild marks on his skin, the stiff rod of his maleness jutting out. "Tattoos," Eames said as he pulled them together. "Paintings on the skin." 

"He said I'm to-" _take in your seed_ , Arthur started but his mind was sparking under the assault of Eames' scent in his nostrils once the other man bent his arm to rest his head on his hand, exposing the damp heat of his armpit. Head buzzing, Arthur buried his nose there and breathed deep, pulling away to exhale through his mouth. " _Oh_." 

"Like a cat." Eames murmured. "Like a hunting cat." He put his hands firmly to Arthur's sides as he rolled them so Arthur lay atop, and they were bare, body to body, and Arthur couldn't help moving, rubbing himself against the source of the scent. Eames pulled their mouths together and kissed him languidly, confidently. "The physicians think you need my seed, but it's the scent that provokes your heat." 

"Where -" 

"Scent is mouth, neck, armpit, private parts. You've scented three already." He pushed Arthur down. "Finish. Under the balls first. I'll pop off in a thrice if you're not careful, though. Save that for later." He was smiling. 

Arthur obeyed dizzily, half believing he was dreaming, crawling down Eames' body, as the man's legs drew up and apart to welcome him. He scented the belly just because it was there and tantalizing, then carefully avoided his rod to bring his face under it, drawn instinctively to snuffle at that vital join below. He could feel a thrumming sound, a low groan building in his bones. He wanted to stay there, warmly cocooned, breathing in that essence, but Eames only permitted it for a short time, then pulled himself up and away, up onto his elbows and knees, shoving the bedclothes down so they were both exposed to the firelight. 

"What?" 

"Last is anus." He had his head cocked, as if he was listening for Arthur. "Just follow your instincts." 

He did, reaching tentatively to part Eames' cheeks, then gasping and thrusting his face to that furled-tight hole and breathing deep as soon as he caught the first whiff of that earthier scent that resided there, somehow stronger and deeper than the others but still Eames in every particular. He had to have more of it. He repeated himself again and again, and then ventured with his tongue in much the same way he had licked at Eames' neck, earlier. 

Eames groaned, and the buzzing spark Arthur felt dancing in his mind became a conflagration. He couldn't stop himself from biting and sucking, and thrusting with his tongue into that rich scent, scarcely aware of Eames' trembling, or how his own arms gripped Eames' lower body tightly as he pursued his satisfaction, the flutter of muscle finally loosening and opening under his assault. When Eames cried out softly, coming, it was nothing to what Arthur felt as his mate's body pumped out some additional subtle perfume. He took a series of deep breaths, feeling it take hold in the deepest recesses of his body, and remembered nothing else. 


	3. Spoils of War

That next morning he was feverish, which Yusuf took as a good sign that his heat was coming, advising him to stay in his bedchamber, where Eames' scent was currently strong, and not to launder the bedclothes either. He opted instead to steal his prospective husband's fur-lined cloak, sending Ariadne with the request and explanation. She came back almost immediately, bearing the article. "He seemed very pleased when he heard the reason for the request, Highness. He appears sincere." She picked up Arthur's hair and draped it to fall over the outside of the cloak, then swiftly braided the hair back from his temples, leaving the majority unbound. Arthur lacked the fully folded eyes of his father's people, but his straight, thick black hair marked his descent clearly, in spite of the light skin he took from his mother. 

"Well," Arthur said, shrugging within the cloak, feeling it settle on his shoulders and the scent of Eames with it, "he'll certainly be cold today without this." And dimpled at her. 

They went out together and collected his secretary. 

Arthur spent his last day as a single man - or, person, he supposed, was more accurate - reassuring people of the sincerity of Eames' promises, checking on their new rations, meeting Eames' man in charge of the campaign's supply. All the things a castellan must. Feeding an army had its own special concerns that feeding a keep did not. Standing before the cistern, supposedly checking the water level and quality, Arthur thought, how easily fates change. Had the high mountain pass not closed due to early snow, the keep's resupply would've come in time, and Arthur wouldn't be getting married that evening. They would have held out until the army had to withdraw for winter. Eames was not a stupid man, and only a stupid man tried a winter campaign against a place like Eagle Flight. 

Snow. Snow in a high pass that Arthur had not even seen fall, and here he was, the very embodiment of the spoils of war.


	4. Consummation

"It's all right" Eames said to him over and over again, as he thrust toward his completion. But it wasn't. Arthur turned his head and tried to say nothing, to make no sound at all. Arthur's throat closed up at a sudden memory ( _shh, you don't want to wake anyone, do you? This is our secret_ ) mixed with the feeling of his husband's body on top of his, and tears sprang into his eyes. 

Finally finished, his new husband whispered "I'm sorry," in his ear, and left the bed where Arthur lay with seed trickling down from between his legs, to make his public appearance after consummation. It was tradition in their corner of the kingdom for the husband to emerge, hero of the marriage bed, and wash his hands and face in a bowl of water, drink a cup of wine, to refresh himself before returning to his bride, in a bawdy presumption of her awakened appetite for him. 

Arthur heard the roar go up as Eames completed his part of the ritual. And it was done. Publicly married and his bride deflowered, Eagle Flight was legally his. Eames had everything now, everything Arthur had worked so hard for, building slowly but surely past his sickly childhood to become a respected figure, a leader of men, a capable fighter and defender of Eagle Flight's borders. He'd pushed himself hard, survived quiet terrors he'd never shared with anyone and studied the arts of war at the knee of his elders. He'd embraced the even more important lessons of production, food storage, and trade from his father, who once told him that proper accounting won more wars than armaments ever could. From his mother, he had studied politics, history, and the subtle maneuverings of position. It was she who warned him of the poisons of court life, and what happens to those who crave power without accepting the responsibility that comes with it. Before and after their deaths, Arthur had worked hard to become a good castellan, a worthy caretaker of his people. 

As the son of the keep's castellan, and later, stepping into his father's boots, he'd settled disputes, overseen production of the keep's goods for sale to traders - textiles, predominantly - protected caravans and the poor equally. He did everything he was supposed to. And this was his reward, to have a man he scarcely knew - might even like under other circumstances - rutting into him. 

Damn Nature for making him an omega, and stripping away his position, his very identity, and leaving him the unenviable task of providing an heir for his lord as swiftly as possible. 

He rolled on his side and wondered if omegas, if found sterile, were permitted to withdraw their marriage vows and take up a religious life as a barren wife might. He could take the path up the mountain, following in the footsteps of the ascetics, and never come down again, spend his days and nights seeking transcendence and occasionally offering succor to travelers. Or if he succeeded in giving Eames a son, might he be permitted to simply leave. He could go to one of the trading towns on the coast, and find humble work as a clerk somewhere, he wouldn't presume greatness again, he would be humble - 

"Darling. Let me see you. Are you hurt?" Eames had slipped back under the covers without Arthur noticing, and was talking softly to Arthur now as if he was a child, patting gently at his wet cheeks. Firm hands pulled him out of the position he'd curled into. He batted weakly to drive him off but froze as soon as Eames made some sort of correcting noise at him. "Did I hurt you?" Arthur shuddered at his fingers reaching and curling gently into his sex, and he clapped his hands over his mouth to hold in any noise. 

He couldn't talk. He couldn't talk. There was a scream lying in the center of his chest and if he let it out it would kill him. Arthur curled around his middle protectively and breathed, almost dizzy with the effort to stay quiet, stay still. 

"I'm sorry." Eames tidied him up and pulled the covers over their two bodies. He pulled himself around Arthur, placing a hand on his belly, rubbing it in an attempt to offer comfort. "We'll wait for your heat to do more, Arthur. We'll wait. I'm so sorry I hurt you." 

It was a long time before Arthur slept. 


	5. The Dutiful Spouse

Normally, he'd be up not long after dawn to be about the business of the keep. Upon first opening his eyes, for just a moment, Arthur wondered why no one had come to wake him, and then recalled he had lost a siege and gotten married, which explained everything. 

Eames had risen before him, and was already breaking his fast when Arthur came down, seeking his own bowl of barley. Aware of the image they made together, Arthur kissed his new lord on the cheek in passing, which won him a smile, and made a point of sitting by him to eat, in demonstration of his fidelity and their vows. Arthur was not one for talk in the early hours, normally, and his new life and related morose thoughts occupied his attention fully as he ate, so that he spoke not a word until Eames put his hand over Arthur's, when he lay down his spoon, and addressed him directly, "did you finally sleep?" 

"Yes, my lord." 

"Good. There is much work to be done." 

"Yes, my lord." But none of it was properly his. He tried to shake off the dejected picture he knew he must present, in favor of looking a little more like a newlywed, but it didn't really take, he could feel the surface slipping. All he could muster was an indifferent mask. 

He realized suddenly Eames was speaking about finishing his review of the keep's accounts. Castellan's duties beckoned, so Arthur followed him to his chambers and the desk and papers waiting there, trying not to look glum. 

They reviewed and calculated the food necessary to run the keep, sent for and heard from huntsmen and herdsmen familiar with the high peaks - whose task was not only to answer the new lord's questions about the presence of game for forage this winter, but to convey their own eyewitness account to the smaller villages and shepherds that the keep had been taken and there was a new lord at all. Arthur played his role, greeting each by name, deferring to his lord and husband, making the transition in authority clear with every sentence he spoke. It was easier than actually talking to Eames. As soon as they were alone, he felt like his mouth was stoppered up, like a wine bottle with a cork in it. 

Arthur had never moved into the Castellan's rooms after his father's death, so quick on the heels of his mother's passing, so when Eames came to his bed, it was _his_ bed, the one he'd had for years and had only received one other visitor to. As the keep's new lord, Eames had claimed the Castellan's chambers. Perhaps Arthur should move to his mother's old quarters, empty and unused for the years following her death, now that he was "wife" to the lord of the keep. It was in keeping with the public display he was attempting. But it was so much easier to stay where he was, so he postponed the thought for later. 

Arthur had two more days of play-acting the dutiful spouse and subordinate, and then his heat struck.


	6. Heat

The morning of the day his heat struck, Arthur rose feeling achy, hot, and unable to get comfortable. He wanted very much to scent Eames again, but the thought of asking him was somehow unbearable. 

Eames inhaled deep when Arthur took his seat next to him, and took up his spoon. "Lady Ariadne," he said, looking at Arthur the entire time. "My omega will shift his rooms today to those of his late mother. Kindly see to it at once." 

Eames kept them side-by-side the remainder of the day, in his chambers, at the stables, and walking the bounds of the keep. In a moment of privacy, as they descended a stair, he turned back and looked up at Arthur, and whispered, "your heat is beginning, I need you to stay close to me." 

Arthur just nodded, feeling dazed. He felt his thoughts turning off slowly, like a clock left unwound. 

"You want to stay close to me, don't you? You feel it?" 

Arthur nodded again without thinking, and Eames smiled, as if he'd been given a gift, and took his face in his hands and kissed him. Arthur felt something stirring inside him, more than his own sex rising to attention, an ache, a need to be filled. He moaned into Eames' mouth and they kept their attendants waiting several minutes, enjoying each others' scent points at mouth and neck. He remembered Eames escorting him into his mother's chambers, where everything smelled fresh and clean and a little of rosemary, and sending all their attendants away, and then telling him to strip. He did, eagerly.


	7. Mated

When Arthur's heat released him, he learned three days had passed. He came back to his senses slowly, as if ascending to the surface of a mountain lake from the dark pressure of the depths. He could smell his own scent and his mate's mingled in the room. Laying there in what used to be his mother's bed, his limbs relaxed, there was a spike in scent, some pepperiness that bespoke action, that told him Eames was coming before he opened the connecting door between their chambers and entered. 

He remembered flashes, Eames' face contorted with pleasure, Arthur ecstatic in his lap, other flashes of searching Eames' body for that earthy scent he'd so reveled in, desperate to cover himself in it, to become it. "What," he said, struggling to rise and failing. 

Eames looked pleased, sitting and leaning over to kiss him, stroking his tongue into Arthur's mouth with lazy possessiveness. "We're properly mated now." 

"I smelled you before you opened the door." Arthur rasped at him when they parted. 

Eames slid the covers down to reveal Arthur's nakedness, looked him over with a proprietary air, then slipped two fingers into the slickness of his now permanently-exposed sex. "Yes. We're fully attuned. It ebbs, over time, after a heat ends." He crooked his fingers, stimulating some pleasurable core within Arthur. "Do you remember me biting you?" He seemed light, happy. "Knotting you?" 

Arthur's eyes tried to cross under his ministrations. A memory surfaced, of Eames biting him, hard, at that junction of neck and shoulder, as the place they were joined below became tighter and wetter, Eames swelling inside him, stretching and then filling him in pulse after pulse that had made Arthur gasp and clench and Eames gasp in turn. Arthur shivered at both the memory and the current pleasure of Eames fingers, stroking him. "Yes…a little." 

"Part of me is in you always, now." Arthur could barely move, only moan, as Eames worked him with a new expertise borne of countless attempts to satisfy an omega in heat. "I've missed this." Eames confided to him between kisses. "Missed having my mate inside me, being inside them." 

It didn't take long before Arthur cried out under Eames' mouth, coming without a hand or mouth on his rod, just those fingers working inside him, thumb pressing right under his balls. 

"Very good. So very good. My beautiful prince. My beautiful omega prince." Eames murmured praise to him as he panted, stunned, the sights and sounds of the room gradually returning to clarity. Eames stilled his hand and withdrew, licking and sucking his fingers clean. It seemed the most debauched act Arthur could ever witness. 

It took ages after Eames left for Arthur to heave himself out of bed, tend to his toilet, and drink cup after cup of mint tea. By the time he felt remotely normal, it was nearly dusk. Arthur went back to his old rooms while his new chamber was tidied up and a fire laid - he hadn't needed one during the extremity of his heat, Eames had actually quenched it lest he be too hot. There were a few items secreted in an alcove of his old rooms that Ariadne hadn't known to fetch. Arthur sat and looked them over, old treasures of his childhood - a carved knife made of bone, a wooden piece with his mother's arms burned into it, an unfinished piece of her embroidery to wrap it all in. He wondered if she'd ever suspected him to be omega. It was a surprise to him, but had she known something else, seen some aspect of his temperament or physicality that served as a sign, and simply died before she could pass on her knowledge? He would never know. 

He folded up his little trove and placed them back in their box, then took it with him to his new chambers, and went down to supper, wondering what happened next, between himself and his husband, after they'd shared the unfettered madness of his heat. Wondered how soon he might know if a child had taken root.


	8. Every Night

Arthur knew his heat was really over when the thought of Eames bearing him down on his back and laying on top of him, repelled and shamed him, worse than ever he'd felt on their wedding night. There was nothing to be done but steel himself. He was a married omega. Children were his husband's right, and a political necessity for them both, lest Eagle Flight erupt in civil discord instead of unite. They might not be Arthur's people anymore as a matter of law, but they were still his responsibility. 

Every night, Eames came to him, smiling, caressing him, bringing pleasure he'd never asked for. He felt betrayed by his own body. Every night, Arthur spread his legs and looked at the tapestry on the wall as his lord rutted into him. The worst was after he'd rested on Arthur's breast, he'd rise on one elbow and work his fingers like he had the morning Arthur woke from his heat, until Arthur shuddered helplessly, pleasure rolling over him in waves and making him cry out. He felt so ashamed that Eames aroused him. 

Eames usually left after an hour or so of bed play. Arthur knew he should be grateful his lord did not frequent prostitutes, he would never be at risk of a disease, or the troubling presence of some bastard with a birthdate prior to that of any son Arthur might yet bear. 

But still, must he come _every_ night?


	9. Night, Interrupted

Perhaps a month or more later, Arthur woke up one night in the small hours, ears ringing with the tail end of a scream, as someone burst into his bedchamber and threw open the bed curtains, yelling something about an attack. Arthur shouted something equally confused back at him. Sleep-befuddled, his first thought was the gate had breached and the siege lost. Ariadne arrived a moment later, hair wild and feet bare, and nearly tipped them both into Arthur's bed in her headlong rush. "What, what is it?" 

The connecting door to Eames' bedchamber disgorged another few men, all armed, all looking at Arthur, the guard at the bed, and gradually letting their arms down as it became clear they were the only people in the room. The guard who'd started it all began to look a little chagrined. 

One man went back to the door to Eames' chamber and held out a hand, taking a sword from Eames' grasp as the keep's lord finally entered the room. And immediately asked, "Arthur, are you all right?" He was dressed in his nightclothes and a hastily-donned robe. Arthur had never seen Eames and Ariadne look so alike; Eames's hair was sticking out in clumps, each in its own direction, and Ariadne's was similarly awry. 

Arthur looked at the guard who'd burst in on him. "Something woke me up. My man thought I was under attack." 

Eames looked at him curiously. Arthur shrugged, "I was asleep. But I heard something. A shout, something. I don't know what." 

Eames looked like he didn't want to leave Arthur's chamber, to protect him from some invisible assailant, but Arthur headed him off: "Lady Ariadne, get under these covers and warm your feet. You can't run about without slippers, you'll catch your death. Someone fetch the lady's slippers." 

Ariadne crawled under the covers with Arthur as household comforts took ascendance. Someone built up the fire as Eames hovered. 

Finally, his eyes starting to close again in spite of the night's excitement, Arthur decided, "my attendant shall sleep in my chamber tonight. If there is an intruder, she will surely raise the alarm." 

Eventually, everyone shuffled off to bed and he and Ariadne cuddled up, sharing body warmth. 

"I've missed this. Not the bits with the siege and no food." She tucked in to his shoulder and Arthur gripped her hand, held it to his chest. "But this." 

"I know." 

"There's so many people here, now." 

"I know." 

"His Lordship didn't mind you putting me in your old chambers, even though it's above my station." 

"Hmm." Arthur said sleepily. "He does not seem to take rank as seriously as some, for all his own high state." Nonetheless, he was pleased Ariadne was installed there comfortably. Partly because it was like having a piece of his old life close by, and partly because he viewed nobles who did not make proper provision for their attendants very poorly indeed. No one who served a prince's person as Ariadne did deserved to sleep on a straw pallet with only a cloak as their blanket. He yawned. "Tell me if anyone is resentful over it." 

"I'll cut their ears off myself, Highness. No need for you to do it." 

Images of Ariadne, with a small sharp knife suitable for apples, carving an ear off some lout's head, that familiar look of concentration on her face, while bloodthirsty, carried him to dreamless sleep.


	10. Night, Interrupted, Again

It took two more incidents before Arthur realized he was the one screaming. It wasn't cleverness on his part, it was more that he woke up mid-scream, throat raw, bolt upright in his bed, flailing and trying to scramble out, sure someone had come for him. It wasn't until he was on the floor, pushing his guard's helping hands away, that he realized what had happened. That it was him all along. 

"I just want to sleep." He told someone levering him up. He was shaking. "I'm sure it was just a dream. Sorry." He felt like he hadn't slept properly for days. 

Moments later, Ariadne's hands were on him as he crawled back into his warm bed. "Ari." 

"Right here." 

"Ari." But he was already falling back asleep.


	11. Three Possibilities

He didn't stir again until the sun was halfway across the sky and Ariadne was clattering about the room with food on a tray, a groom trailing behind her. 

"Up you get, lazybones." 

Arthur disentangled himself from bed, rolled to his feet, and slipped into the robe she held for him. The groom poured wine into a goblet and uncovered the tray, pulling away a cloth to reveal a piece of cheese, and barley-meal baked with fruit in a bowl. There was no meat. Not quite invalid food. He dipped his hands in the waiting bowl to wash them, as Ariadne shooed the groom away and shut the door. 

"Eat. You're not eating. Do you even eat at night?" 

Arthur had never thought of himself as a picky eater, but his throat often closed up when he dined at Eames' side at night, thinking of what came later, after Eames had digested and refreshed himself and opened the connecting door to Arthur's rooms. 

Arthur obediently stabbed the cheese with a knife, crumbling part of it into the bowl. Ariadne wrinkled her nose. 

"It tastes good this way." He said to her, defensively, gulping down the first few bites quickly past the knot of tension in his belly, then slowing enough to take in the mellow barley flavor overlain with the sweetness of the fruit and sharpness of the cheese in contrast to it. 

She frowned at him, "only you think that," and felt his forehead. "The physician will come to you after you've eaten." 

All Arthur's hunger fled. 

"Why?" 

"Which theory do you prefer - that you are pregnant, poisoned, or going mad?" 

Arthur blinked at her and looked at his lap. His stomach knotted further around the food he'd just swallowed. "The former, I think would be most politically advantageous. For Eames, certainly." 

She waited, eyes sharp, until he looked back up. Then she mimed a knife across the throat, and raised her eyebrows at the connecting door to Eames' chamber. 

"No, Ari. I surrendered my sword and signed the marriage contract. I can't undo my word. Eagle Flight is his." 

"It doesn't have to stay his, Arthur." 

"What good is giving your word only when it's easy to keep?" Ariadne's expression was three parts _oh no, not noble duty again_ , and two parts fondness for idealists, but she said nothing. " I surrendered. We surrendered. Civil strife would just cause more death. Married, I stay hostage for his good behavior. " Arthur picked up his spoon as if he would eat more. "Give it a couple of winters when everyone's sharing beds and making babies, and we'll be one keep again." The push and pull of history taught him that. He poked at his food, then abandoned the pretense. "He provided for the maimed soldiers, Ari. And he knows his accounts and trade. He makes a good castellan." 

"No better than our last." 

"But no worse, also." 

She stood and took the tray as Arthur mumbled _sorry_ to her for not eating more, but left the wine and goblet. 

"I hope it's the former. For your sake, highness. My fear is of the latter." 

Madness she meant. Arthur hadn't screamed himself awake for years. Sometimes he wondered if she suspected what had gone on between himself and the old physician. But even now, Arthur couldn't bring himself to discuss it. He pushed the thoughts down into his head, visualizing a dark cellar, and locked them behind its door. 

"Maybe we'll be lucky, and it's all three."


	12. Omega Troubles

Luck was not on Arthur's side, but Yusuf passed the incidents off as the omega equivalent of 'female troubles'. Arthur and Ariadne had, at a young age, observed that only the well-off had the luxury of such troubles. Everyone else kept on going. It was embarrassing to find himself benefitting from entrenched beliefs about omegas in this fashion. 

Restful sleep began to feel like a myth. It didn't take long before Arthur just didn't get out of bed one day. Just curled up dozing through maids cleaning and tending the fire, and a groom with a tray of food Arthur didn't touch. Instead, he lay there, feeling as though his very mind was slowing to a limping pace, uninterested in the goings-on outside his bed, outside his door. The keep didn't need him. He was just an omega. He shouldn't have been allowed to claim his father's place to begin with. He was all wrong. It was better if he stayed here, out of the way.


	13. Pillow Talk, After a Fashion

Someone slapped him on the cheek. Then a second time. Yusuf. 

"What…is it?" He slurred. "Is it a fire?" Maybe the keep could burn down and then Eames and all his people would go away and he wouldn't have to be omega anymore. 

"He screamed in my arms, Yusuf, in his sleep." That was Eames' voice, very close by. That's when Arthur realized who was holding him up, whose scent was in his nose. Eames was in bed with him. Eames had come to him that night and exercised his rights to Arthur's body. Helplessness and anger swept over him in equal measure, but he was so tired he couldn't sustain them. 

"Drink this." 

Arthur gagged on the taste in Yusuf's cup and used the last of his energy to push him away, harder than he meant to, "no tonics!", before collapsing against Eames' chest with the exertion. For once, the touch didn't bother him, which made Arthur fear momentarily he was entering another heat. "Jus'…leave… _alone_." He punctuated his instruction by turning into Eames' broad chest like a burrowing animal and flinging an arm around him. Eames smelled good. 

"He doesn't like tonics." Lady Ari, defending him, all blessings upon her. 

"No one likes tonics." Yusuf, with asperity, practically in Arthur's ear. Arthur listened, but it was like they were talking about someone else. 

"The other doctor always gave him tonics." 

There was a pause in conversation and Arthur drifted, hoping they had gone away and he could keep to his Eames-pillow without interruption. 

"What other doctor?" Eames and Yusuf asked in unison. 

"The Princess his mother's doctor. He tended the prince…quite closely. For years." THere was some extra weight in how Ari said it that Arthur couldn't identify, only feel. 

"For what?" 

Ariadne didn't answer. Arthur didn't know himself. "Didn't like him," he muttered into Eames' chest. "Always touching me." 

"All right." A gentle hand combed through his hair. It felt good. Arthur could feel himself sliding further into sleep, regardless of the conversation taking place over him. "All right, we'll let him sleep through the night without your concoction, if he can." 

"Eames-" 

"Good night, Yusuf. I see waking you was unnecessary. You can leave us, both of you." 

The hand kept stroking his hair and Arthur kept sliding closer and closer to oblivion. "Touching you?" 

"Mm-mmm." 

"How?" His voice was gentle, like his hand. 

"At night. Come in…at night." With that, the last iota of Arthur's consciousness yawned mightily, and surrendered to formlessness. There were no more questions, or if there were, he didn't hear them.


	14. Pillow Talk, Redux

Waking was horrifically embarrassing. Arthur came alert clinging to Eames, head on his shoulder. He rolled clumsily up on an elbow and Eames' eyes fluttered open. His hands stayed still. 

"You slept." 

"Um…yes." The look on Eames face was one of an unguarded degree of warmth that Arthur couldn't interpret. Finally, Arthur blurted, "why did you stay?" 

"You were comfortable." Eames shrugged, an operation that began at his shoulders and progressed down under the bedclothes. "I was comfortable. And you slept through the rest of the night." 

Arthur lay on his back in the bed, not touching Eames. Took a deep breath. "I did." He took the measure of himself and found he was still tired but more refreshed than he'd felt in days. "That was good," he admitted, closing his eyes. Belatedly, "thank you." 

Eames moved, but not to clasp Arthur. Tucked his hands under his head, exposing the familiar scent point of his armpit. Arthur inhaled deeply without moving, then opened his eyes. 

"Your childhood physician." Eames said, finally. 

"What of him?" 

"You never mentioned him." 

"What was there to mention?" 

"Well, what was he treating you for?" 

Arthur cast his mind over the official cause of his physician's attention, and found none. He had been prone to earaches as a child, he remembered being inconsolable over them. But the precise malady was lost in time, in his mother's fears, perhaps. "I'm not sure. My mother was always fretting over her health, and mine. She set him on me, or he persuaded her to, and his treatment never really ended until after she died." 

"You got better?" 

"I sent him away." Arthur stared up for a while. "Then I got better." 

"Hm." Eames digested that for a moment. Then, sat up and climbed out of bed, pulling on his robe and making for the door connecting their bedchambers. "I'd best get in my own bed, darling, or they'll send a search party. I'll see you soon for breakfast."


	15. None of the Above

No one appeared to pay any mind to Arthur's return to more normal conduct, as if he hadn't just spent a week or more tucked in his bed with nothing wrong with him except some malady of the soul. Since he wasn't, apparently, pregnant, or poisoned, or - hopefully - going mad. 

He sat by Eames with his bowl of porridge and listened to the Lowenese men reminisce about eating their bread with oil in more southerly climes. Eagle Flight was high and ran cold, and their butter, whether from sheep or goats - cows didn't fare as well in the hills - was easy to keep cold year-round. Arthur found the differences intriguing, wondered what was different in southerner foods because they used oils rather than solid butters and lard. He supposed it must make their bread taste different. Perhaps more like pan bread cooked on the trail. He'd used oils for that in the past. 

Caught up, for once, in pleasant thoughts, Arthur didn't notice his lord and husband finish his meal and stand over Arthur, until his hand dropped a ring into Arthur's smaller one. 

"Perhaps you could bring this to my chambers later tonight, to return it. If you wish." 

By the time Arthur came back to his rooms, tired from trying to catch up on everything in the keep in one morning, the connecting door between their rooms had been modified, to include a lock. From Arthur's side. He threw the bolt at once, and something in his shoulders that he'd never noticed until that moment, relaxed.


	16. Duty

Coming to Eames was better. A page would bring a note to his outer chamber while Arthur was at dinner if he was alone, or Eames would hand him his ring at table and ask him to return it later that evening. And Arthur would. He had no right to turn Eames away, and this was the same thing. He would bathe, even it if was just a a scrub with a wet cloth while standing on the rug in front of the fire, adorn himself - nightshirt, a long heavy robe over it, and take his candle in one hand and dismiss Ariadne with the other. 

The lord's chamber didn't look like his father's rooms anymore. The tapestry with the hunting scene had been replaced, the bed made over anew, eschewing the canopy (a choice Eames would no doubt regret in the dead of winter), and a table and two chairs set where his father's chest used to be. There were no memories in the room anymore. And Eames was in it, usually on the bed, or in his chair, garbed in his own gown and robe, and always, his face lit up when he saw Arthur. 

Arthur did his best to repair any cracks caused by his prior withdrawal. He publicly accompanied his lord throughout the keep, kissed him hello in the morning, and embraced him at length one afternoon on the steps of the courtyard. He made a point of engaging all the men at table, trying to cultivate friendships between Eagle Flight's men and Eames' Lowenese. If he was more wife than anything else, he supposed this sort of matchmaking lay within his purview. 

The kind of affectionate play Arthur engaged in during the day, almost innocent, was easy with Eames. His features and voice were pleasing, his gaze on Arthur appreciative, even doting, his scent, enthralling. He was charismatic, with his warm manner and humor. It was only after, when Arthur had retreated to his own chamber, late in the afternoons, that he felt ill-at-ease all over again. It was easier to eat in his own rooms, but he could not be seen to withdraw again. 

He rationed out the nights he ate in his chambers, picking out a pattern to fortify himself for the dinners when he had only indifferent appetite due to nerves. Yusuf watched him annoyingly closely, which made Arthur overly conscious of every bite. It didn't help _at all_. He considered saying so, but he didn't know the man well enough. Perhaps something indirect, through Ariadne, would suffice. 

He had to make this work. He had to find a way to make this work, or his sacrifice meant nothing. He couldn't stand the thought of it meaning nothing.


	17. Second Heat

After his second heat, when Eames woke him up, his body still loose and nearly sated, he handed him a cup of cooled mint tea, and lifted Arthur's head to drink it. "Gently," Eames told him, guiding Arthur's hand with his own. "Four days is a long heat." 

His lord fed him two more cups before lowering his head to its place on the pillow. There was a red mark on Eames' neck. Mortified, Arthur realized he must've put it there. 

"I look forward to you remembering your heats," Eames whispered lowly, "so we can blush together." 

"Why don't I remember…" 

Eames brushed hair away from Arthur's forehead, leaning over him. His scent made Arthur's legs tremble, body still trapped in the vestiges of his heat. He could feel sudden wetness and a shadow of the unrelenting need to be filled that governed him during his heat. "Perhaps one more time, now that you _can_ remember…" 

Arthur squeezed his legs shut at Eames' probing hand. "Tell me why I can't." 

"My wife didn't, for the first year or so." Eames tugged with demanding hands until Arthur relaxed again, eyes rolling up into his head as Eames stroked his fingers into him. "Scholars say a young omega's mind is simply overwhelmed by the experience at first. Her heats were a mere 6 weeks apart back then. Not like yours. It's been three months." 

Unresisting, Arthur drifted as Eames picked him up, then settled them on the chest at the foot of the bed, pulling a naked Arthur down slowly into his lap, spearing him, heartbeat by heartbeat. 

Eames rocked them slowly. Arthur had never felt anything like it, pleasure undulating up his spine, until he had to let it out with a cry. "Yes…that's it. You're so beautiful, Arthur." This time, he felt the knot that Eames body formed, tying them together so that none of his seed could escape. 

He feel asleep in Eames' arms, and there were no dreams save the fleeting memory of their pleasures, darting across his consciousness, and then moving on into the night.


	18. Stamina

Eames seemed almost invigorated by their marathon bouts of coupling during Arthur's heat. Yusuf hinted it had to do with the natural stamina of an alpha. Privately, Arthur thought the childbearing half of the couple was the one that needed the stamina. Still, Eames glowing, spreading good cheer after emerging from his ardent communion with Arthur, energetically entering into whatever endeavor presented itself made for a good impression on the people of the keep - an active, interested, healthy, and above all, _virile_ , lord.


	19. Research

At the oddest moments, Arthur found himself wishing for a mentor, someone to guide him through what it meant to be an omega. His mind swirled with questions, why did omegas exist, when half their organs wouldn't get used to procreate? Unless there had been some very strange marriage practices in long ago days. He wished he had someone to teach him how to go on, to reassure him that 3 months between heats was normal, to explain to him what pregnancy would be like. Neither the midwife who first confirmed his nature, nor Yusuf, physician he may be, could answer those questions from a perspective of common understanding. He had only theory to guide him, and little of that to begin with. 

Instead, he poked restlessly at the thick slice of bread baked with nuts in it, topped with sweetened butter, that made the bulk of his breakfast today, then crumbled a bit and brought it to his mouth. 

"How do you fare, my prince?" A commonplace inquiry. 

"I was just wondering." He continued prodding at his food, nibbling from the edge inward. "There has not been a recorded alpha or omega in Eagle Flight in at least two generations." It was the only piece of proper research Arthur had been able to conduct on the topic, and all it did was tell him how alone he was. "The mountain people, my father's people, almost never produce any at all." 

"That is curious." The tone of Eames' voice said otherwise, unfortunately. 

Arthur sighed but kept trying. "Have you heard of such things in other places, my lord?" 

Eames shook his head, eyes on his own breakfast and the flow of conversation around the table. 

"I wondered if climate had anything to do with it. The air is thinner in the mountains." He popped another piece of bread into his mouth and chewed. "It's colder here than in the south. Maybe…" 

Eames was looking at him in surprise. 

"What?" 

He put his knife down. "You normally don't talk so much in the morning." 

That much was true. Arthur contemplated his food for a while, chastened. "I'm an omega now." He shrugged, helplessly. "I'd like to understand it." 

Eames hmmmm'd at him, and eventually the meal resumed.


	20. Inquiry

Arthur's third heat was even longer. It took days after to feel at all normal. When he did, he sent Ariadne to the physician, Yusuf. 

Arthur received the man propped up on pillows, Ariadne at his bedside. Surely, a portion of his ignorance was solvable. He started with the easy question. "Will my heats keep getting longer?" 

"It is not clear, Highness. What is clear is that the omega body seeks to conceive, however long it takes." 

Arthur clasped his hands together on top of the covers. "And what happens if an omega spouse cannot conceive?" 

"I'm sure that's nothing to fear in your case, Highness." 

Arthur let the silent weight of his princely regard rest on Yusuf's frame. 

Eventually, "so long as the omega in question experiences regular heats, they must continue to try to conceive." Yusuf searched the dosser behind Arthur's head as if it contained vital secrets. "It is not a choice. It is a…a mandate of the body that cannot be shrugged off." With the air of recitation, "an omega in heat must be sated in the confines of the marriage, lest they be done a harm." 

"What kind of harm?" Arthur probed. 

Yusuf glanced at Ariadne, who bore her best lady-in-waiting face, conveying no information. "An unmarried omega in heat will seek to couple as frequently as possible. Uncontrolled-" 

_Interesting word choice_ , but Arthur didn't say it. 

"-such an omega may be driven by his or her passions to even attempt coupling in the streets with strangers, to their own ruination, whether it be disease, or exhaustion, or exposure to the elements or other dangers during their heat, which all understand to be a period when their minds have fled." 

"His Lordship cannot divorce me for barrenness? Cannot place me in a religious order should I fail to conceive quickly enough?" 

Yusuf brightened, misunderstanding Arthur's purpose, and attempted to reassure him. "No, Your Highness. It is the nature of the bond between an alpha and an omega. So long as you have heats, which you will for a good many years, Your Highness, for you are young and in good health, your marriage is secure and your husband will continue trying to get a child on you. So long as he is near you when you are in your heat, he cannot resist you anymore than you can resist him." 

"But if an omega is barren…" Arthur didn't finish the sentence. _If I'm barren, can I leave?_

"No omega I have ever learned of has been barren, Your Highness. You should not fear ever being set aside, or sent away, by his Lordship, on those grounds. And, it is clear that he cares greatly for you." 

Arthur raised his eyebrows at that, but soldiered on, "will I always have heats, all my life?" 

"Not quite. You will have heats until your body can no longer conceive. Much as a woman's courses stop as she ages, your heats will ultimately end." 

Arthur looked at Ariadne, who asked, "But a woman's courses alone do not mean she is able to conceive. Many women have courses but no children." For example, Arthur's mother, who did not bear a child until her third marriage. 

Yusuf bowed slightly to her. "True, my lady." 

"Does suffering a heat mean that His Highness is fertile during it? Or does it happen regardless of fertility?" 

Yusuf answered Ariadne's question as if it had come from Arthur's lips. "For what other reason would one have them, your Highness, if not to conceive?" Yusuf shifted on his feet, looking back and forth between his two interlocutors, then settling again on Arthur. "Surely, Highness, worrying over such matters is premature. You've been wed under a year." 

That was true. But Yusuf mistook Arthur's fears, fortunately so. 

It appeared Arthur was not going anywhere. Ever.


	21. Revelation

It was a cold morning in late spring that led Arthur to break his fast in bed, feeling fuzzy-minded and too cozy under his bedclothes to venture out just yet. Something about the day - sharp but the blue of the sky bearing the promise of a northern summer - left him almost lazy. He did not see Eames until the afternoon, when he found his lord in brief consultation with one of his men, on his way to the stables. 

Eames turned as Arthur approached, without prompting, clearly scenting him from a distance. Eames breathed deep, then, legs eating the distance between them quickly, put his hand on Arthur's belly, smiling soft and almost shy. "My prince," he said wonderingly, "you're with child." 

Arthur stood very still for a space of several breaths, icy terror sweeping down over him, then, unthinking, he turned and ran. Instinctively he sought high ground, just to get away, and then instinct faded into the recognition that he had only a tiny period left to act for himself, and only one act left to him. He ignored all calls from behind to stop. None of those voices mattered. He dodged obstacles, human and otherwise, driving up into the walls of the keep. He pointed a finger imperiously at a man guarding a closed door and the man opened it for him, wide-eyed and confused, then tried to close it as Eames's voice called out from behind an order to the contrary. Arthur didn't bother speaking, just battered his way through it and hurtled up the stairs with speed born of desperation, the sounds of boots on the stairs matching the beating of his heart in his ears. He ran faster, ignoring the stitch forming in his side. It wasn't the highest point in the keep, but he didn't need to get to the highest point in the keep. He just needed to get high enough. There it was, his chance, open sky visible as he reached the top of the wall. Arthur threw himself into death's arms without a backward glance. 

For a weightless moment, he thought he'd actually done it, finally liberated, and then he felt the arms and bodies clinging to him, bearing him back down to the cool stone, crushing him as he struggled to get free. 

When Eames reached for him, panting with exertion, trying to hold him, he started weeping. "No, no, no, this is a mistake, this is a terrible mistake. I made a terrible mistake, you have to let me go-" 

"Shhh, it's all right." 

"Never have surrendered, this is a terrible mistake, I can't do it, please I want to go-" 

Eames looked shocked. 

"Just let me go, it was a mistake, I didn't know what it meant, it was a mistake-" 

The rest of his pleas were drowned as Yusuf arrived and they forced some vile concoction down his throat. 


	22. Realization

In the flurry of activity surrounding carrying Arthur to his rooms, Eames didn't have to think about what he'd said. He watched as Arthur was lifted into his bed and plied with warmth and comforts, as if he suffered from some fever, instead of a deep-rooted despair. Lady Ariadne climbed into the bed with him and supported his head in her lap, leaning her own beside the embroidered deer on the slowly fading tapestry at the head of the bed. Mechanically, Eames posted guards at the door and the connecting door to his own chambers, then warned off from gossip the men who had seen their prince's attempt to kill himself.

Once the flush of excitement in a crisis dissipated, however, Eames sat down by the fire in his own rooms and considered the events of the day, and what his omega prince had said, thrust into a panic over Eames's announcement far greater than Eames had ever thought possible. As the prince's words sank in, they did so alongside a growing sense of horror. Arthur had surrendered because it was the only choice before him. He'd said yes to marriage because it was the only choice before him. Omega or no, he'd acted at every turn as a true leader: sacrificing himself for his people. Yet, from the depths of his being, Arthur wanted none of it. 

His body responded beautifully to Eames' touch, he begged, nay, demanded, to be mated by him, but only when he was in heat. All the other days of their married life together thus far - married life that Eames had thought started rather well, given Arthur's public affection, his overt show of support for Eames' claim on Eagle Flight, smoothing the way for Eames, none of which he had to do, none of it, all of which left Eames believing they had some kind of partnership, some kind of accord based on mutual attraction and respect, forming between them - he experienced as some sort of siege of his own soul. Arthur had traded the siege of all the people of Eagle Flight for one solely of its prince. Eames wondered if he was brave enough to do the same, had the choice been his. 

And that meant Eames was _raping_ him, every night they lay together. Every time he had opened the connecting door to come to Arthur when they first wed, all Arthur heard was his torturer coming. It was _horrible_ , and what was more horrible was that in order to maintain his claim to Eagle Flight, he _needed to keep doing it_. His claim wasn't truly secure until Arthur gave him a son. 

And Arthur knew it. Arthur saw all of it, the full scope of the future bearing relentlessly down upon him. Had always seen it. It was Eames, who'd been blind. 

No wonder Arthur yearned for death. Better a clean death, when there is no hope of relief. 

Until this day, he hadn't really thought of Arthur as his own person at all. Even while castellan of a keep under siege, Arthur was already rumored to be omega, and Eames stupidly and uncharitably thought of him as just that - omega. Not a man, though he looked like one, but a creature born for marriage treaties and domesticity, and raised to and in those spheres. Not a peer, a man of letters, or pursuits. Not a man who might harbor his own dreams of negotiating a marriage and bringing a blushing bride back to Eagle Flight. Not as someone with a future. 

His own wife had been omega, and Eames had foolishly expected his second marriage to be a similar one. A distant cousin, Rose-Marie was of suitable rank for him, raised to believe that as an omega and a woman, her life was meant for the domestic sphere, for raising children. She'd seemed happy at the thought, at the marriage contract, at meeting her alpha, at their mating. The thought of their first night together during her heat still made him blush. Her tongue had been bold, her desire all-consuming, and she'd worked them both again and again to completion, then cried when there was no child as a result. 

Arthur had told Eames himself, he hadn't been raised an omega. There were none in Eagle Flight. Nor alphas. He was simply the son of Princess Mary. Raised to rule, and therefore, to serve, his people. 

Eames just hadn't listened. Eames had been married to the Prince of Eagle Flight for nearly a year, now, and it had scarcely even once occurred to him that Arthur had depths of being at all. 

He sat with his shame in the growing twilight for a long time, not moving until a servant came in to tend the fire. 

They were married. There was no going backward for them, only forward. During pregnancy, Arthur would suffer no heat. Eames could refrain from seeking his conjugal rights under the guise of protecting the growing child. That gave them both time to reflect, and Eames time to try to woo the omega he'd so blithely married.


	23. Despondency

Even after he was weaned off Yusuf's vile potions, Arthur's senses still felt dulled. Ariadne's hands hovered over his growing belly when she helped him dress, but there was no room in his thoughts for her, only the child growing inside him, stealing his life force to consolidate Eames' reign. He told himself again and again it was good, he would bear a son - Yusuf had assured him masculine omegas more often had sons - and then, and then - 

He did not think past that point. Instead, Arthur shuffled through his days with the sense it was all a dream, the faces of those around him blurred slightly, save those he knew well. He did not stay long at meals, and ignored the pair of guards that dogged his heels constantly, watching carefully to ensure he did not hide anything sharp up his sleeve at table. 

He was not permitted into the walls of the keep. 

When he took to his bed, as he had in the early days of their marriage, everyone seemed relieved. There was little harm he could do himself there. It made monitoring him easier. Arthur did not bother to tell them, he still had his childhood bone knife in a box in his room. 

For now, he weighed the knife against his duty, and duty won. But in the darkest of nights, a prince's burdens began to feel like something a knife could easily sunder. On those nights, he huddled under his bedclothes and clasped his head in his hands until sleep claimed him.


	24. Premature

He woke in blinding pain sometime past midnight, lower body wet, unable at first to even squeak out a call for aid. The pain ebbed for a moment, and he called out for Ariadne, not knowing if his voice carried.

Pain clenched him in its fist again. 

When he was aware of events again, there were people hovering over him. Ariadne's face was focused and intent as she touched him, fingers gentle under his nightclothes, Yusuf leaning over her until she snapped at him to get out of her light, or better yet, hold that candle close, would you? The sternness of her voice made him feel afraid, but he was floating above that fear, for a time, until pain gripped him again and brought him down to earth, leaving him to squeeze Eames' hand so tightly he could feel the bones of his hand moving in Arthur's grip. 

Then, blessed darkness. 

He woke, hollow.


	25. Rehabilitation

Days passed after their son's stillbirth that Arthur did not count, feverish with blood loss, wild with despair, and once he did begin to count them, they were still too many. 

The air was cold in the morning he finally felt well enough to sit up in his bed and eat porridge with a spoon, rather than sip broth from a bowl in Ariadne's hands. She sat with him, watching carefully as he ate, then pronounced his appetite good. They sat, in silence, for a while, Arthur with his eyes shut, until Ariadne reached up to run her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow. 

When their eyes met, he saw the sorrow in them, how long he'd been lost and away from her. "Oh, Ari," he sighed. Their fingers intertwined, slowly, and then he tugged her into his arms so that they lay together, breathing evenly, slow and calm as the keep woke fully around them. 

He felt more like himself that day, and moved into his outer chamber once the fire was laid there, Ari at his elbow for support as he walked, and cushions abounding for support as he sat. 

When his husband was announced, he wasn't surprised. 

Eames swept in, his initial impression of vigor belied by the circles under his eyes and the crease between his brows. He kneeled and took Arthur's hand in his own. "Thank the Fates." Pressed his cheek to it and held still long enough that Arthur was compelled to reach with his free hand to mold his palm against Eames' head. Thickly, "Arthur." 

"Yes, my lord." 

He took both Arthur's hands in his, but didn't rise. "You look well." There was something almost timid in the man's gaze, that made Arthur feel timid in return. "I have something for you." Eames gestured for a page to come forward with several unrolled scrolls on a tray under a paperweight. 

"I took the liberty…of expanding your research into omegas in the north, to make some inquiries of certain scholars with my father's introduction. Several have written at some length in return, on omegas in general, their purpose, and population across the kingdom and elsewhere. If you would care to reply directly, I have ensured your writing things are stocked, or if you prefer to dictate -" 

Arthur said nothing, just straightened gingerly and inspected the tray of letters, placed at a small table by his elbow, then Eames' face, confused. Eames had written to various scholars requesting they propound on the qualities of omegas and their purpose? He must have written months ago to have so much correspondence collected by now. 

Finally, "which…which one arrived first?" Arthur asked. 

Eames indicated one with a simple black seal, the mark of a merchant, or man of law. A stranger, eager to speak to Arthur? 

Arthur took up the scroll, angled for the best light, and forgot his audience.


	26. Conversation

Conversations with Eames, at table, began with Arthur's flourishing correspondence, and from there, expanded to include Eames' military teachers (including his much-lauded father), a Lowenese herbalist who might welcome the gift of some of Eagle Flight's high mountain plants, unknown in the south, the mysteries of celestial mechanics, and on to any number of subjects. 

Knowledge was one subject for which an appetite, once wakened, is never truly sated. 

And, so, after such a long period of privation, Arthur feasted. 

In his turn, Eames seemed to delight, almost, in presenting his prince with new dishes.


	27. Declaration

Until: 

"When you wish to return it, Highness." Eames folded Arthur's fingers over the ring. They were briefly alone, in Eames' outer chamber, going over the keep's accounts. "Not before." 

Arthur looked at him for a long moment, measuring, and finally nodded.


	28. Adjudication

They were still at their evening meal when Arthur's secretary approached him. "A delegation from High Wind asking for immediate hearing, Your Highness." 

Without another word, Arthur pushed his food away, gestured for a bowl, and washed his hands, Eames' ring on his finger glinting briefly. Then nodded at his secretary, apparently without even thinking to consult Eames. "Bring them in." 

Eames abruptly realized he was seeing his predecessor as castellan in action, unselfconscious, gaze bright, head high. 

They were five approaching the high table - three witnesses and the disputing pair. They shrugged off their woolens, revealing the deceptively small frame and lidded looks of Arthur's father's line, which stretched up into the highest peaks above the keep. They bowed to Arthur, and he rose and bowed back, sitting with his hands clasped in front of him on the table. Ritual mint tea was offered, sipped, and then they got down to the business at hand as Eames and the rest of the assembly watched. 

When Arthur asked, "and what did the village mothers advise you?", and the one on the left made a complicated answer involving bloodlines of people and livestock, Eames began to realize how wildly the law of inheritance and blood of the mountain people differed from that of the valley dwellers. It appeared the disputing pair were previously married years before and the marriage dissolved in some mountain fashion, with no children, and now each sought to make provision for their new families from prior marriage gifts, but since one gift had included land _and_ livestock, and the giver had since died without expressing their preference to reabsorb the land or something that eluded Eames, it added some complexity only a neutral party with authority could resolve. Eames could not understand half of it, all three - the two disputants and the Prince hearing them - cited the same ballad for principles of law. His head was spinning inside moments, yet Arthur navigated this web of relationships, equity, and mountain legal precedent with clear ease. 

All eyes shifted to Eames after Prince Arthur was finished and pronounced his judgment. 

Eames sipped from his cup. "In disputes between the people, the Prince speaks with the voice of Eagle Flight." Meaning its new lord. "Are you of High Wind satisfied with his decision?" 

And just like that, Eames had granted a married omega more authority than any other may have wielded before, and yet a drop of water compared to Arthur's capabilities. 

They _were_ satisfied, and well so. Within the hour, formalities dropped, Eames learned they truly were Arthur's cousins, many times removed, and the entire party was visibly pleased when the Prince asked after their mutual relatives by name; their answers occupied most of the rest of the evening, and Arthur pressed food on them which they finally accepted after making the traditional thrice-refusal. 

"Many waves of invaders have crashed up on these mountains," Arthur said into his cup, much later, when Eames asked about the difference between mountain and valley. "The keep straddles these worlds. So must its rulers." 

Eames had not thought much of the mountain heritage of Prince Arthur's father, as it did not appear to offer him obvious value after the keep fell. He'd assumed Arthur's mother had made an ill-advised match. She'd been married twice before, and both husbands died without issue. 

It was not until the next day, when the mountain villagers had departed for their home, that Eames found a moment during their meal to ask Arthur, whether his mother had been trapped into marriage to the mountain-descended Castellan. 

"No." The smile on Arthur's face was fond and nostalgic, and happier than Eames had possibly ever seen, as he looked at his bowl of stew, clearly seeing something else. "It was a love match. The political advantage was there, regardless." 

Any further disputes - land, love, livestock - were from that moment forward addressed to Arthur as adjudicator. Eames couldn't see it, but somehow the walls, and the people within them, of Eagle Flight gave a sigh of relief, settling back into what was clearly a well-worn and understood groove of _take it to the Prince_. He began to see, albeit dimly, how Eagle Flight had absorbed its invaders in the past. The lord's face may change, but these people's ways did not. Not really. 


	29. Beginning

Eames sprang up as soon as he saw Arthur emerge from the connecting passage, hand wrapped tight into a fist. Arthur was wearing robes over his night gown, so Eames pulled on his own to avoid a greater state of undress, of anything lascivious. "Have you come for a…visit?" He felt as nervous as a boy in front of his tutor for examination. 

"Yes." 

Eames gestured at the chest at the foot of the bed, and bent to stoke the fire. Arthur just stood, watching him work. Eames finished and then sat on the chest. Arthur's eyes were dark and gleaming in the firelight. 

He seemed disinclined to break the silence, so Eames did, nodding at Arthur's fist. "Is that my ring you have with you?" 

"Yes." Arthur said slowly. "I wanted to return it." 

He held out his hand, and Arthur approached, his face as serious as the day the siege ended, and opened his hand, taking the ring gently in his fingers to deposit it in Eames' palm. Their hands didn't touch, until Eames started to close his hand and Arthur's, hovering, brushed his skin, resting as lightly as a butterfly. Arthur didn't look him in the eyes, focused on the point of contact between them, as if he were worried what would happen should he look away. 

Gradually, Eames dropped his hand into his lap, and Arthur withdrew. Eames cleared his throat. "Will you sit?" 

Arthur looked at it as if wondering whether the chest - or Eames - could be trusted not to leap up and attack him. Then nodded, perching tentatively, leaving a gap between them. 

They watched the fire for a while, together. 

"How have you been feeling?" 

Eames wasn't sure if it was an answer to his question or not, but Arthur replied with his own question, "Is my heat coming?" 

Eames breathed deep. "No." There was none of the tell-tale scent in the air. 

Arthur nodded with a muttered _good_ , and squirmed closer. Eames kept his hands in his lap. 

"I touch you." Arthur's head settled against his shoulder. "You don't touch me." 

"All right." Eames kept looking the fire, blinking slowly as they sat together, as sleep crept in around the edges of his awareness. "All right." 

By dawn's light, he was gone, and Eames would've thought it nothing more than a strange dream were it not for the ring. 

It was a start.


End file.
